Immaculate Grid

The Immaculate Grid is an online trivia contest that begun April 4, 2023 and has since found tens of thousands of daily players. It is part of the Baseball-Reference family of sites, like this one. The game features a 3x3 grid where the contestant has nine chances to find players who match the two intersecting criteria. The goal is to fill all nine cells with no wrong answer - an immaculate grid, - with the least-picked players leading to a better score - the lower, the better. For instance, in the first Grid, picking Nolan Ryan as a Texas Rangers pitcher in the Hall of Fame got this writer a score of 64 (as 64% of positive answers for that box were Ryan), while Cy Young as a Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer was 2 (earlier players, and more obscure players where this applies, tend to get better scores).

Originally, each grid could only be played once, on the day it was published, but the site eventually made it possible to try one's luck on archived puzzles.

The game exists for other sports covered by Sports Reference LLC, including football, hockey, basketball and soccer. By its nature, the game makes players who have appeared for a large number of teams valuable commodities, as they can often be used when a participant is stuck looking for someone who has played at least one game for two particular teams. In baseball, an otherwise low-profile player like Jesse Chavez fits this description since he is the active player who has moved around the most and thus can often be used when one is stuck in trying to fill a particular square.

Further Reading

• Scott Chiusano: "Can Immaculate Grid legend Jesse Chavez name all his teams in order?", mlb.com, February 20, 2024. [1]

Related Sites

• Grid site